Did You Vote on Monday?

So did YOU vote in the Alberta provincial election? Did your friends, family, siblings, and adult children make the effort?

I've never taken my vote for granted, but really came to value it after the experience of working as an assistant returning officer during the 1988 federal election and seeing just how much work goes into giving us our democratic right to a secret vote and honest results.

The Returning Officer that I worked for during that election subsequently travelled as an Elections Canada official to Thailand and other developing countries where she worked with those governments to develop the structures needed to hold open and legal elections.

When Afghanistan was preparing for its first election in 2004 (Elections Canada had a major role), I remember seeing a photo of ballot boxes on the backs of animals, being trekked over high mountain passes for delivery to polling stations. It made me reflect back on how hard WE had found it to organize an election and marvelling at what was going on in this country with few roads, poor telecommunications and no culture of democracy.

What has also impressed me in Afghanistan and elsewhere are the lengths that people in new democracies will go to and the dangers they brave so they can vote and have a say in who governs them. Yet so many Albertans couldn't or didn't even make the small amount of effort required to vote in Monday's election.

So the question that everyone seems to be asking on radio, TV, and print is why the record low voter turnout and where do we go from here? Democracy is too important to just be left until there's an election campaign; I think it needs to be nurtured and encouraged all the time. But how do we do that? How do we get people engaged? How do we get people to treasure their right to vote?

Please share your thoughts here, write to your MLA, or both. Our government needs to hear from us, and on a local level, maybe some of what is learned can be used by municipalities to encourage higher voter turnout for the 2010 election.